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Is using the word shibboleth a shibboleth? I never really understood it until now and have never and probably wouldn't use it.

EliRivers 7y ago
The word itself was the original shibboleth; used to identify fleeing Ephraimites. It did not go well for those Ephraimites thus identifed.
- afarrell 7y ago
  The word "lollapalooza" was used similarly in night-fighting against the Japanese in WWII.
  - ptaipale 7y ago
    My father was a veteran of WWII, in the Finnish army fighting the Soviets. In (I think) 1972, I was a 6-year-old kid, and we went to the town 60 km away (we did not go there very often). Suddenly, my father exclaimed "Hei yks!" (Finnish for "hello one!") to a man on the street. Then they greeted and spoke quietly for quite a while. I didn't understand it at all. Only much later I realized that the other man was a brother-in-arms of my father, and "Hei yks!" was the shibboleth of their unit; it had been devised for a night-time attack in very extreme conditions in February 1942, and the men in the brigade then used it throughout the war to identify each other whenever there was no mission-specific one defined. Russians cannot very well pronounce the y in "yks" the way Finns do. (This was of course no strong guarantee because the Soviet army had some native Finnish-speakers, but most were not.)
- FabHK 7y ago
  Specifically, Judges 12:4-6: 4 Jephthah then called together the men of Gilead and fought against Ephraim. The Gileadites struck them down because the Ephraimites had said, “You Gileadites are renegades from Ephraim and Manasseh.” 5 The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan leading to Ephraim, and whenever a survivor of Ephraim said, “Let me cross over,” the men of Gilead asked him, “Are you an Ephraimite?” If he replied, “No,” 6 they said, “All right, say ‘Shibboleth.’” If he said, “Sibboleth,” because he could not pronounce the word correctly, they seized him and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. Forty-two thousand Ephraimites were killed at that time.
partyboat1586 7y ago
Using the word makes you sound like a smartass. As if other people don't know what a shibboleth is. Everyone knows it without needing a word for it.

EliRivers 7y ago

The word itself was the original shibboleth; used to identify fleeing Ephraimites. It did not go well for those Ephraimites thus identifed.

afarrell 7y ago
The word "lollapalooza" was used similarly in night-fighting against the Japanese in WWII.
- ptaipale 7y ago
  My father was a veteran of WWII, in the Finnish army fighting the Soviets. In (I think) 1972, I was a 6-year-old kid, and we went to the town 60 km away (we did not go there very often). Suddenly, my father exclaimed "Hei yks!" (Finnish for "hello one!") to a man on the street. Then they greeted and spoke quietly for quite a while. I didn't understand it at all. Only much later I realized that the other man was a brother-in-arms of my father, and "Hei yks!" was the shibboleth of their unit; it had been devised for a night-time attack in very extreme conditions in February 1942, and the men in the brigade then used it throughout the war to identify each other whenever there was no mission-specific one defined. Russians cannot very well pronounce the y in "yks" the way Finns do. (This was of course no strong guarantee because the Soviet army had some native Finnish-speakers, but most were not.)
FabHK 7y ago
Specifically, Judges 12:4-6: 4 Jephthah then called together the men of Gilead and fought against Ephraim. The Gileadites struck them down because the Ephraimites had said, “You Gileadites are renegades from Ephraim and Manasseh.” 5 The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan leading to Ephraim, and whenever a survivor of Ephraim said, “Let me cross over,” the men of Gilead asked him, “Are you an Ephraimite?” If he replied, “No,” 6 they said, “All right, say ‘Shibboleth.’” If he said, “Sibboleth,” because he could not pronounce the word correctly, they seized him and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. Forty-two thousand Ephraimites were killed at that time.

partyboat1586 7y ago

Using the word makes you sound like a smartass. As if other people don't know what a shibboleth is. Everyone knows it without needing a word for it.